Newbie seeks advice: Hunter or Mage for solo player

[Vicodine]

Hunter, definitely.

[Animalhouse]

Hi vanilla gurus. I seek your advice!

First of all, I have never played vanilla WOW apart from some private servers up to ~30 level. For the past year I have been really excited about classic and wanted to give it considerable time commitment. But I haven't yet decided which class would I want to play, since retail wow provides no help in assuming role and "playability" of classes in classic. I have spent some time browsing forums and class discussions and my choise narrowed down to either Hunter or Mage. Mage was my main class since wotlk till legion and I love the class fantasy and how it plays together. Hunter is a complete mystery and a fresh breeze in a game I have played for 10 years, since I have never touched Hunter. Please help me decide between those 2 (or suggest other options).

Below are the list of criteria which are important to me and by analizing which I came to conclusion that I should choose between hunter or mage.

What I look for in a class:

Most important traits:

- Good at solo leveling. Includes fighting elites and gankers.
- Good at solo gold farming in lategame (preferably in dungeons to combat open-world competition for farming spots) and doesn/t require insane amount of raid gear to do so.
- Easy to gear to be effective.
- Good at solo grinding BG's - that's what I mainly plan to do.

Not so important traits:

- Be desirable in group content / do not have great difficulties to find a spot in dungeon runs both during leveling and at 60.


Irrelevant traits:

- Performance in raid and overall pve dps.I am not interested in raiding in classic, so if my choice would be awfull I won't cry, and if it will be good for raiding - probably I won't even care.

Please englighten me, oh mighty gurus.

As a vanilla Hunter I recommend Hunter for a solo player who plans to do mainly BGs. Hunters are monsters in BGs and world PvP. The whole rpg element of you and your pet are great in classic! You actually get attached to the pet and it is just the 2 of you against the world. If you think raiding would be more of your focus than Mage or Warlock, but if enjoying the journey and BGs then Hunter hands down.

[classicwowbuilds]

I would go hunter for sure. Can solo elites easily.

[Bakis]

I think you should go hunter. Mage is just to boring and static.
Hunter got a much higher skillcap in PvP which you will focus alot.

[Outofmana]

As for farming options I'd say Hunter is a more dodgy choice atm. We still aren't 100% sure if blizzard will make DireMaul North soloable for them, as this truly destroys the economy, looting pure gold, sure #nochanges but it feels like this could be made impossible. As it comes out later, no way to tell now. If so, then you are out of 'proper' options.

Mage has DM:east, ZG Bijou's (first few days you can make thousands of gold) and also open world aoe like Hearthglen for either gold, or boosting low level alts quickly.

[lonely zergling]

Its still unknown if dm east lashers even drop good enough loot on a real server. Pservers have wonky droptables at best. ZG croc farm got nerfed in vanilla too afaik. Never take pservers as a reference for such things tbh.

But yeah both classes best gold farm spots are not confirmed to work yet. Hunter atleast has maraudon and tribute should work with the oldschool way unless they custom fix it. (altho much harder as on pserver as your fd can be resisted even with improved fd)

I would go with mage tho as a newbie because its easier to have succes with them.

[Naramag]

I have played hunter in vanilla. Unfortunately, classic will start with a patch that has a lot taken away from hunters. Before, different pets had different attack speeds and other rare traits. That was all streamlined.

As hunter you're good for everything. You don't really have to work, it just happens. If you know how to kite, you can do anything.

Drawbacks: Groups are always hard to find. In Vanilla, nobody wanted a hunter in the group. There was always the fear that the pet causes wipes and stuff. And since hunters could equipt almost any weapon (we had close combat weapons AND our guns and bows), there was always a fear that the hunter claims an item the tank or whatnot could use.

[Gavll]

Thanks everybody for the replies. I was wondering, if hunter is unwelcome in raids, what are the ways to get good enough gear for farming and pvp? Or is pvp gear sufficient enough?

You always need 3 hunters in a 40 man raid so they're not unwelcome as such. There's plenty of good hunter gear in Dire Maul and ZG too.

- - - Updated - - -

I have played hunter in vanilla. Unfortunately, classic will start with a patch that has a lot taken away from hunters. Before, different pets had different attack speeds and other rare traits. That was all streamlined.

As hunter you're good for everything. You don't really have to work, it just happens. If you know how to kite, you can do anything.

Drawbacks: Groups are always hard to find. In Vanilla, nobody wanted a hunter in the group. There was always the fear that the pet causes wipes and stuff. And since hunters could equipt almost any weapon (we had close combat weapons AND our guns and bows), there was always a fear that the hunter claims an item the tank or whatnot could use.

You're partially correct. Pets still have different attack speeds in 1.12 but they don't have special traits like resistances, pursuit speed or shadow damage.

[xindralol]

yep hunter or mage sounds good they’re both good solo classes

[Evereghalo]

Hunter. Your dps may trail compared to a mage in late raiding. But everything you describe, I see as a hunter.

[Mukind]

Hunter for everything but solo pvp in a BG

Hunter is a role player. Not as easy to dominate a WSG as a hunter. You can lock down your base. But being the FC while bursting down the EFC is gonna be a bit rough relative to a mage.

Mage can do it all but support in WSG

Hunter better in solo wpvp tho by a wide margin IMO. Much less mana reliant so u can take on 1 v 3 and still win. Where a mage has to get out and evocate or burn cds on mana. Also tracking OP in wpvp

Both are needed for raids. Hunter is more about making sure you tranq/kite. No1 really cares about your DPS although if u do gud will get respekt because it's hard as vanilla raiding goes. Or was on the original client anyway

[Swarmyman]

Hi vanilla gurus. I seek your advice!

First of all, I have never played vanilla WOW apart from some private servers up to ~30 level. For the past year I have been really excited about classic and wanted to give it considerable time commitment. But I haven't yet decided which class would I want to play, since retail wow provides no help in assuming role and "playability" of classes in classic. I have spent some time browsing forums and class discussions and my choise narrowed down to either Hunter or Mage. Mage was my main class since wotlk till legion and I love the class fantasy and how it plays together. Hunter is a complete mystery and a fresh breeze in a game I have played for 10 years, since I have never touched Hunter. Please help me decide between those 2 (or suggest other options).

Below are the list of criteria which are important to me and by analizing which I came to conclusion that I should choose between hunter or mage.

What I look for in a class:

Most important traits:

- Good at solo leveling. Includes fighting elites and gankers.
- Good at solo gold farming in lategame (preferably in dungeons to combat open-world competition for farming spots) and doesn/t require insane amount of raid gear to do so.
- Easy to gear to be effective.
- Good at solo grinding BG's - that's what I mainly plan to do.

Not so important traits:

- Be desirable in group content / do not have great difficulties to find a spot in dungeon runs both during leveling and at 60.


Irrelevant traits:

- Performance in raid and overall pve dps.I am not interested in raiding in classic, so if my choice would be awfull I won't cry, and if it will be good for raiding - probably I won't even care.

Please englighten me, oh mighty gurus.

Hunters are faceroll at solo levelling and it can get outright ridiculous at lvl30 with Feign Death to bypass large packs when questing and a bunch of other stuff.
Hunters are faceroll at solo gold farming in late game for the obvious reasons of having your own tank. Also a bonus to not needing so many supplies (besides arrows ofc) like the rest do and the uptime is the best of everyone besides warlock, arguably as hunters can frontload burst well enough.
Hunters are faceroll at gearing because there isn't much competition, especially alliance.
Hunters are faceroll at BG's. They own BG's, all three of them. WSG - Great at flag camping, great at dominating mid, great at running with the pack. AB - Great at defence (especially NELF) and you make rogue backcapping obsolete as long as you don't position your pet in a way for them to blind n sap at the same time, great at general point control. AV - AV is the home of hunters, no matter what you do from tower/bunker control to spamming shots behind hills when turtling. AV is the hunters battleground of choice.

Group content
Skilled hunters are faceroll in dungeons but there is a stigmata because of pet control, multishot and general 40yd range instant shot shenanigans.
Hunters pretty much cap out in late bwl pve wise and the rest of the dps overtake them by miles, generally speaking.
You want to get into raids at least to full gear in bwl so you can be generally great for the class for the rest of what you want to do.

t. 03/2005 huntard main that cleared halfway through naxx in vanilla.

[Tehterokkar]

This right here is the best response you'll get. It's common sense classes with pets that can absorb damage you don't have to.

Except in beta Voidwalker is useless beyond the Sacrifice bubble. It can't hold aggro at all.

[bestexe]

Based off your stated desirable traits, I'd say hunter. I think Mage ties or loses against hunter in the desirable traits, and mostly wins in the other ones.
There are some exceptions of course (AOE farming for example), but mostly I'd advise you to choose hunter

[Voidwielder]

I wonder how it's possible to be an actual solo player in Classic.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Here is how I would make my choice between the two.

Do you want to manage a pet or not?

Yes? Hunter for sure. No? Mage for sure then.

Not many people here are wrong for the reasons why both are good. But really the pet is the fundamental difference. You have to feed it to keep it happy. To play hunter well you will need to manage it by healing it, directing it, and using its abilities especially during leveling or you will spend a lot of time resurrecting the thing and needing to feed it more to make it happy again. Its not a difficult task managing a pet by any means but it is a task.

So I would center your choice on do you want that task or not because both are welcome in raids, both solo well in different ways, and pvp gear is well and good for both.

[Noxina]

I wonder how it's possible to be an actual solo player in Classic.

Not too hard, unless you want to do dungeons. You can gear up with PvP from random BGs, farm gold and buy BoEs, or pick up a profession that lets you craft gear you need.
Also, it's not like you have to be actually social to do group content. People seem to have this belief that everyone was best buddies in dungeon groups, and had amazing chats while clearing epic dungeons that took 48 hours to do. While in fact it was more like spam general chat for a couple of hours, get a group, walk to the dungeon and clear it as fast as possible with just the same amount of communication as we have now ("cc the caster please, thanks").

You will just not have access to the best gear awarded from raiding.

[Sandraudiga]

Given your criteria hunter is your only choice of the two.

As people have mentioned mage can get insane later on, but they either haven't read your post in full or haven't a clue what they are talking about. To really hit the roof a mage needs raid gear and very specific drops outside of raid. Far easier to go hunter and tick all your boxes without that gearing hassle. You'd still be better off getting raid gear for either class but without that hunter is your choice.

[Noxina]

Given your criteria hunter is your only choice of the two.

As people have mentioned mage can get insane later on, but they either haven't read your post in full or haven't a clue what they are talking about. To really hit the roof a mage needs raid gear and very specific drops outside of raid. Far easier to go hunter and tick all your boxes without that gearing hassle. You'd still be better off getting raid gear for either class but without that hunter is your choice.

Just go Mara and solo farm as a mage, easy gold. Also, personally I'd say Mage is more fun to play in BGs. You don't really need gear, as you can kite forever (if you go frost, which you should), gear just makes it a shit ton easier.

That said, hunter is probably the easiest choice of the two. Easy to level up with your pet tanking everything, just remember to stock up on ammo.
Though mage isn't too hard to level up either, and you'll save a lot of currency from crafting your own food/water. AND you can run a small buisiness with portals, earn some extra cash while sitting in the capital city eating breakfast or what ever.


I'd say, go find a private server and test them both out. Level them to 20 or something and see what you enjoyed the most.

[Kyphael]

Except in beta Voidwalker is useless beyond the Sacrifice bubble. It can't hold aggro at all.

Damn, sure as hell not rolling Warlock in Classic if that's the case.